//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: Believe the Builders // Story: Steel Solstice // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Sunset stared at the wall in her latest in a series of dull physics classes. The lecturer droned on, as he had done for what felt like years. Sitting in these rooms did strange things to her concentration, forcing her to remain on task and improving her memory such that she never forgot a lesson. Yet in spite of all the pressure in the back of her mind, trying to nudge her thoughts back to the board and the n-body simulation techniques she was learning, Sunset found she no longer cared. “Excuse me,” she said, raising a hand. The instructor stopped, not even the least bit perturbed. He was, after all, only a golem. “Yes, student? Do you want me to start at the beginning? Is there an aspect of this concept you don’t understand?” Sunset leaned back in her chair. She’d grown another year or so older, judging by the height and the increasing evidence of what passed for sexual characteristics among the Builders. Mostly it meant an uncomfortable widening of her hips and weight on her chest that necessitated an additional garment to mitigate. “Suppose I left this lesson early,” she said. “Would I have to start over, or could I continue from here?” The instructor betrayed no emotions, no sign of the insult an Equestrian teacher might’ve shown at being so rudely asked if she could leave. “That is an irregular request, citizen. Are you sure you would not rather return to your studies?” She did feel something pulling her back to the desk. A powerful desire to go back to the workbook and the lump of plastic that builders called a calculator. Yet she’d felt such desires before—when Celestia had trained her how to resist mind-control charms, Sunset had learned how to differentiate a desire that was internal from one that was external. Once the division was internally demonstrated, it could be observed and then ignored at her leisure. She ignored it now. “Positive,” she said. “Could we continue this later? I need to… do something else.” “Of course,” the instructor nodded. “Your progress is saved in your student file. You may continue at any time.” Sunset stood up and walked away without another word. She didn’t even look back at the golem, just walked right up to the door and folded her arms. It was still locked. “Please unlock the door,” she said. “I’ll be back when I’m ready.” The door clicked open. Sunset Shimmer slipped out into the hall without the usual flood of accomplishment and joy she’d previously enjoyed every time she’d walked out of a classroom, but also with far less subjective time spent. It hadn’t even been a month, she was fairly sure. Sunset Shimmer practically slammed the door shut behind her, slumping against it and staring up at the hallway. It was packed with people, apparently engaged in their studies as diligently as she. Yet even a cursory inspection seemed to suggest they were as artificial in their own ways as the teachers. Instead of simulating an instructor, they simulated the emotions of young people. To make me feel more at ease? Maybe whoever runs this place felt bad that nobody was around. It made sense. Beings of perfect harmony like the Builders would not do well when isolated from one another. The one real one Sunset thought she had met had made friends with her despite apparently being some kind of criminal. Jackie knew magic. The Builders had taught Sunset incredible things in their automatic school, things that Equestrian engineers would’ve killed to learn. But she hadn’t studied any magic, only experienced it. The secrets that Celestia had refused to share were still hidden from her, even if they had already been used to grant her the eternal youth and strength that were the Builders’ birthright. I could always graduate and go home. I’ve practically achieved what I wanted just by arriving here. But did she really want to be an alien in her own world? How could she possibly convince the ponies of Equestria to prepare for the coming dangers if she looked so… strange? Would she have believed the warnings if they had come from a being so weird, say a dragon or a diamond dog? No. Celestia herself had failed to convince Sunset that she was not infallible. Only a careful study of history had finally convinced her of that. “I’ve lived long enough to watch ponies I love destroy themselves in search of power.” Celestia’s last words rung in her ears like a taunt, echoing over and over, joining with the voices of the fake people all around her. Sunset lifted her bracelet and navigated to her contacts. She’d long since mastered how to use this device, thanks to her first sophomore level class. She selected the message function. Hey, Jackie, I’m older now, and I’m bored with learning things I don’t need to know. Is that offer still good? The response came almost instantly, text appearing just below what she had written. So it’s a date? Sunset ground her teeth together, trying to resist the urge to be snide. I want to learn real magic. That’s why I came to this planet. Can you teach me or not? Damn, you’re from Luna? I thought you space people were less superstitious. People were staring at her. Sunset wasn’t sure if they could actually see her, or if they were just staring because that was what their instructions required. No one else in the school stood alone, they either had groups or they were moving. Builders had friends, and they expected her to have them too. She started walking, but her attention was still directed downward at her wrist. How do you know about Luna? It shouldn’t surprise her that the Builders would keep close tabs on her world. But knowledge of Princess Luna and her banishment was far from widely distributed. Most historians didn’t even know. Everyone knows you guys are still up there, Jackie responded. We expected you to die out, but that didn’t happen. Guess you got sick of algae crackers and wanted to eat the steak, huh? I’m not an agent, but I can teach you to see the code. Sunset Shimmer had already sat through an entire course on the English language and mastered it completely. Yet in spite of speaking the same language by knowledge instead of the spell that had facilitated communication initially, she could make little sense of what Jackie was saying. If seeing the code is what you call magic, then yeah. I want to learn, and none of these classes seem designed to teach me. That’s because a new upload can get herself corrupted before she’s even got a root-level backup. Once the personhood is gone, you can’t ever get it back. I’m ready, she insisted. I was an expert at magic back home. I’m sure the principles will be communicable once I learn the theory. Alright, Jackie responded. I’ll bring the whole gang. We’ll go apeshit on that instructional simulation. I’m attaching a file—run it once you’re by the front entrance. You’ll be our little Trojan, kay? * * * Sunset made her way to the front of the school without much fanfare. If any of the simulated people suspected she was about to break out of the boundaries set out by the Builders, they made no sign of it. What was I expecting, guards? If Celestia’s are ceremonial, the Builders shouldn’t need them either. Then again, what would the world be like where everypony had an Alicorn’s powers? Even the least ambitious could learn forbidden magic when they had an infinite lifespan to study. The front entrance was mostly deserted, its many doors apparently uninteresting to the school’s residents. Sunset pushed on the metal bar and slipped outside into the sunlight. From the outside, the school looked far less imposing. A reddish building with only two stories and rows of identical windows. Near the entrance to the school was a statue, depicting… a pony? Sunset rushed to investigate, though even at a distance she could tell something was wrong. What she had taken at first glance to be a single creature was clearly two distinct beings, a biped like herself riding on the back of an equinoid of far sturdier build and lither limb than any pony she’d ever met. Even Saddle Arabians didn’t have proportions as impressive as this stallion. Yet the feature of the sculpture seemed to be on the man riding its back, a powerful figure with an impressive beard and a sword in his hands, pointing upward at the sky. There was an inscription, though Sunset suspected she would already know the name. “King Richard Morgan,” it read. “Protector of Mankind, Defender of the Faith, and Sovereign of the Steel Tower.” “You’re the one I really need to meet,” Sunset muttered, stopping right at the base of the statue and looking up at that stern face. In his way, this man looked a little like Celestia. Stern, unyielding, confident. But there was a gentleness to his features, one she wouldn’t have been able to recognize without several subjective years of study among the Builders. It was hard to believe she’d already spent so much time here. “Have I been gone a week? Maybe two?” Celestia probably hadn’t ever been worried about her, really. She was just concerned about another pony learning magic she couldn’t control. Well, Sunset would learn that magic, and she would prove Celestia wrong by only using it for good. The Alicorn could choke on her words. Sunset opened the file Jackie had sent, tapping twice to run it. Her screen went black immediately. She tapped on the side of the display, a little annoyed. “Was Jackie playing a prank on me?” Had she intentionally bricked her bracelet? Then the air around the display got dark too, faint tendrils extending from the exact point it had been. They seemed to reach for her, hungry. Sunset leaped back in fear, squeaking faintly and tumbling to the ground. For all the time she’d spent in this new body, almost all of it had been sitting down in desks. Without her, the blackness found the mirrored surface at the base of the statue, reaching into it and making the whole thing rippled like a pool of water. Like the mirror portal in Equestria. Someone emerged from within. Jackie’s hand appeared first, spreading the reflective surface for her as she clambered through from parts unknown. Nor was she the only one—several other humans followed behind her, four in all, and Sunset knew at the genuineness of their discomfort that she was looking at real people. No sooner was the last one through than the mirror returned to normal, losing its dark twinge. Down on her wrist, Sunset’s tool flashed white, then displayed its booting logo along with a progress bar as it restarted. “How was that for an entrance?” Jackie spun, meeting her eyes and grinning. Unlike Sunset, Jackie didn’t look even a little different than she had the last time Sunset had seen her. Jackie was still taller, though the difference now was very slight. Sunset would be the bigger of the two once she got the rest of her maturity back. “Uh… unexpected,” Sunset admitted, looking down at her arm. “I didn’t think… my GIO can do magic?” “You weren’t shitting us,” one of the people behind Jackie muttered, staring openly at Sunset. “She does call it magic. Don’t they have the scientific method on Luna? It’s a research station, right?” The male was larger and bulkier than Jackie, and dressed like someone who didn’t care what other ponies thought of him. “Don’t be mean, Robbie,” Jackie chided. “The dirtborn is brand new. It’s not her fault she’s ignorant. We are gonna help her out.” “And get all the best stories to share around the realm,” said another one of Jackie’s companions, also male, with darker features and a tight white suit of some kind. “That’s the real reason. We don’t need to pretend.” “Well, no,” Jackie admitted. “But nobody’s going to be a dick about it. We’re going to teach Sunset how to be a proper code-monkey, and she’ll be so grateful she’ll share all her exciting stories about life in the meatverse. First, though.” She gestured. “Robbie here is the one who couldn’t keep it in his pants. He also does all our database shit.” The dark-haired Robbie nodded, though he didn’t offer to shake her hand. “Noah does our breaching.” Jackie pointed to the one in the white suit. “Nobody better at finding the little weaknesses in a system. He made the program you ran to bring us here.” Noah offered his hand. “Pleasure,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “Well he has to find the little holes,” Robbie said, raising his voice a little. “She wouldn’t feel it if they were big holes, would she?” Robbie laughed at the brilliance of his own joke, though Sunset couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. Noah blushed, and Jackie only groaned. “That just leaves Bree.” She pointed back at the last of them, another female. She was a full foot shorter than Sunset had been even at her youngest, with orangeish hair and strikingly pale skin. Sunset stared at her for several uninterrupted seconds, trying to place what made her seem so familiar. The moments passed with no answer forthcoming. “Bree mined herself a metric shitton of private keys and we’re still riding on them today.” The one in question didn’t even wave, just looked up at Sunset with a friendly expression. “Nice to meet all of you,” she said. She had expected to use this opportunity to tell Jackie the truth about where she’d come from, to explain Equestria and its needs. But if Jackie hadn’t struck her painfully as a criminal, these four certainly did. But what does a criminal even mean for the Builders? So far as she had seen, it meant somepony who broke rules and made fun of each other. Nothing as severe as the crime that happened in Equestria. I’ll get to know them first. Maybe I’ll be able to trust them. It wasn’t like Sunset hadn’t made herself into somewhat of a criminal herself, defying Celestia’s direct orders and seeking the Builders. Maybe they had more in common than she’d first thought.